Today's desktops and laptops have become fast enough that we've stopped seeing huge performance increases from generation to generation. This year's processors and graphics cards are faster than last year's, but not by so much that it's worth buying a new PC every year.

In smartphones, though, it's a different story. We're still seeing huge jumps in performance from one year to the next. The Apple A6 processor in the iPhone 5, for example, promised (and largely delivered) performance that doubled that of the iPhone 4S released only 11 months before. Qualcomm's quad-core Snapdragon S4 Pro, widely used in the high-end Android phones of late 2012, is quicker than the dual-core version of the S4 used in the high-end Android phones of early and mid-2012. And as these phones have become more powerful, our expectations of them have also increased. The modern smartphone began life as a capable Web browser and e-mail checker, but increased processing power has made them multitasking, media-playing, communication-facilitating, game-playing workhorses.

It's the workhorse part of the equation we'll be focusing on today in the fifth and final entry in our ultimate smartphone guide. We'll be looking at the best way to get work done on iOS, Android, and Windows Phone 8, evaluating both the capability of each operating system's built-in apps as well as the best third-party apps for filling in functionality gaps.

As in the other articles in our guide, BlackBerry adherents will need to sit this one out—BlackBerry 10 is getting its big reveal on January 30 and we'll be paying plenty of attention to RIM on and after that date. But for now, it doesn't make much sense to focus on older BlackBerry handsets with such a radical rethinking of RIM's smartphone strategy coming soon.

To keep this article manageable in size and scope, we'll define "productivity" in terms of e-mail, calendars, word processors, and other related tasks. There are certainly other niches, but these are the ones that will be the most broadly applicable, whether you work in a corporate Exchange environment or you're just trying to keep track of your own wheelings and dealings. When we talk about Android, we'll also be using the stock operating system as found on the Nexus 4 to evaluate the operating system's built-in apps—most of our observations should apply to any recent smartphone running Android 4.0 or 4.1, but the details may vary. The third-party apps should be identical on any supported Android phone, however.

E-mail

Enlarge/ The iOS Mail app makes it relatively simple to connect to a wide variety of services.

Andrew Cunningham

E-mail is a core smartphone feature no matter what platform you're using, so we'll talk a bit about the out-of-the-box capabilities of each platform before moving on to alternatives.

The built-in iOS Mail client is a decent all-rounder that supports a wide variety of services—Apple's own iCloud, Gmail, Microsoft Exchange, and other major e-mail providers are all here. Once you've added multiple e-mail accounts, you can view your various inboxes separately or in the unified "All Inboxes" view. iOS 6 introduced "Flagged" and "VIP" message views to further help with organization—the former allows you to keep track of messages you've marked as important, and the latter allows you to mark certain senders as important, making sure you always know when you've gotten messages from one of them.

The advantage to having a one-size-fits-all e-mail client is that, regardless of what services you use, they're going to look and act the same basic way when you use them. The downside is that the Mail app doesn't make use of many service-specific features, like Gmail's color-coded labels (which show up in iOS as folders) or Exchange's similarly color-coded categories. It also won't import your Gmail contacts unless you set up a separate CardDAV account to sync them, an extra step not required in other clients. You could also use Google Sync to connect to Gmail via Exchange and sync contacts that way, but this is a feature that Google is now restricting only to Google Apps for Business, Education, and Government customers while disabling it for personal Gmail and free Google Apps accounts (the latter of which is also being killed).

Enlarge/ The stock Gmail and Email apps on our Nexus 4 look and act mostly the same, but the Gmail app is better integrated with Google's e-mail service.

Andrew Cunningham

By contrast, Android phones typically include two separate e-mail clients: one for Gmail specifically and one for other IMAP and Exchange accounts. The Gmail app is solid; it supports multiple accounts, it allows you to navigate easily between your labels, and it comes with plenty of options to let you configure the client to your liking.

The stock Email client is also serviceable, but despite its visual similarity to the Gmail client, you're not given as much flexibility in it as you are in the Gmail client. Where the Gmail client will let you swipe to archive or delete messages and automatically shrink them to fit the width of your screen, the Email app doesn't. You also can't ask the app to confirm before performing actions like sending or deleting mail. Bringing feature parity to the two apps doesn't seem like it would be difficult since most of Email's missing features are in no way tied to the Gmail service, but as of Android 4.2 the two apps are still unequal. You're also not given the option for a unified inbox view in the Gmail app (though you can in the Email app, the rare feature it has that Gmail doesn't).

The Email app also had some problems connecting to the Ars Office 365 server. Where both iOS and Windows Phone automatically detect its server configuration using just the username and password, the Android Email app needed additional manual server configuration. Android's Exchange support is good once you've got it configured, but that initial configuration can be difficult.

Enlarge/ Windows Phone comes with a slick, unified mail client that works well with all services, especially Exchange.

Andrew Cunningham

Exchange support is one of Windows Phone's greatest strengths. Like iOS, Windows Phone 8 comes with a unified e-mail client that makes it easy to set up Gmail, Hotmail, Exchange, and other POP or IMAP-compatible e-mail accounts. All of these services use the same client, but every account you create leaves a different live tile on your home screen.

As in the rest of the operating system, top-level navigation is performed by swiping from left to right rather than diving into menus. The top-level categories—all mail, unread mail, flagged mail, and urgent messages—are tailored for Exchange, but they work fairly well for other e-mail services, too. You can also use the "link inboxes" feature to see messages from more than one account at once—you can link all of your accounts to get one big unified inbox as in iOS, or you can choose just to link certain accounts to create custom inboxes (one for work accounts and one for personal accounts, for example.

If you're using a third-party service—and we'll keep using Gmail as our primary example—it would be useful to be able to add additional folders to the top-level navigation. Gmail categories like "starred" don't map to either the "flagged" or "urgent" categories in the Windows Phone Mail app, and moving from the inbox into another folder is the work of four taps. It works well enough, but those who rely heavily on folders or labels to organize their messages may find it irritating. Happily, unlike iOS, the Windows Phone 8 mail client can pull in contacts from Google and other e-mail services without requiring Exchange on the server end, eliminating the need to sync the contacts with a third-party program or service.

Other e-mail apps

Enlarge/ The Gmail for iOS app uses terms and icons that Gmail users will already be accustomed to.

Andrew Cunningham

If you're just a Gmail (or Google Apps) user who would like a stronger native Gmail experience in iOS, Google's Gmail app (free) has improved immensely since its recent redesign. The app supports Gmail's labels along with multiple Google accounts, and it features ties to the Web-based version of Gmail that the native iOS Mail app doesn't (the ability to use the same signature, for instance, or to use the "send as" feature to send mail as one of the accounts you've connected to Gmail).

Enlarge/ As you'll see shortly, the Gmail app employs swipe-heavy navigation and a layout very similar to the Sparrow for iOS app.

Andrew Cunningham

The app's design, which rumor has it has been helped along by members of the Sparrow team Google acquired over the summer, is also quite slick—menu buttons and sliding panes make it quick to access and organize all of your mail, but never take you too far away from your inbox. This stands in contrast to the standard iOS mail client, where moving from your inbox to any other folder can be the work of many taps.

The Gmail app also offers full support for push e-mail and the Notification Center, making it a plausible choice for default e-mail client even though iOS doesn't officially allow third-party apps to replace the built-in ones (if you want to be able to send e-mail from other iOS apps, however, you'll still need to setup a Gmail account in the stock Mail app). Its main downside is that it supports only Google accounts.

Enlarge/ Sparrow's swipe-happy navigation and general layout have obviously had an influence on the new Gmail for iOS app.

Andrew Cunningham

If you need support for IMAP and POP but want a similar look-and-feel, Sparrow for iOS ($2.99) is still a plausible contender. Officially, yes, the all Sparrow clients are discontinued. However, the app continues to get small but significant updates, though neither former Sparrow CEO Dom Leca nor Google's PR team could tell us how long this would continue. iPhone 5 support was added in November, and a number of small bugfix updates have appeared both before and since.

Sparrow has always been developed with Gmail in mind first, but Sparrow also works for generic IMAP and POP accounts, giving you a well-designed alternative to the default Mail app if you want one. It does lack Exchange support, however, and major new additions like push e-mail support will almost certainly never come. Its support status makes it a hard sell these days, but it's still worth diving into if you're exploring your options.

Enlarge/ AquaMail uses a nice, readable interface, but more importantly it gives you a host of options that the stock Email app doesn't.

Andrew Cunningham

On the Android side of the fence, AquaMail (free) and AquaMail Pro ($4.95) will give you a bit more flexibility in your IMAP accounts than the stock Email app. It comes with more flexible view options, the ability to shut off mail checking when on a cellular data connection, a Gmail-like option to color-code folders even for non-Gmail accounts, and the ability to shut off e-mail checking during the nights and weekends for you workaholics.

The inbox view also displays the date each message was received on, making it a bit easier to find e-mails you know were sent on a certain day. It also lets you hide e-mail from the app without actually deleting it from the server, sort of analogous to Gmail's "archive" function. For basic users, none of these small tweaks are strictly necessary, but compared to the relatively option-free stock app, AquaMail is quite customizable.

Springing for the pro option allows you to add more than two e-mail accounts, add alternative identities to accounts (like Gmail's "send as" feature), and removes the promotional AquaMail signature from the bottom of your messages. Unfortunately, neither provides true Exchange ActiveSync support—your Exchange administrator will need to support IMAP access to your server for you to get your work e-mails.

Talking about note taking on windows phone and excluding OneNote is a major oversight, as it is included for free, syncs with SkyDrive and has a web editor for all platforms as well as native apps for ios and android. Recommending some third party app is fine, bit at least mention the superb native support.

It's unreal that an article that includes a section on note taking ignores (arguably) the best note taking app, OneNote. It's been included with Windows phone from day one, has had cloud integration from day one, and can sync across multiple devices.

My notebooks are synced across my phone, work and home computers. It is easily one of my most used programs on a daily basis.

This article needs a touch of Peter Bright. More to the point, articles involving multiple platforms should be co-authored by the experts of those platforms.

God I have been so disappointed in Android for actual productivity work. I for one think it would have been nice if you discussed security in relation to all of these productivity categories. This is the main area in which I have been seriously let down by Android.

I bought a nice new Nexus 7 (also own iPad and iPhone). I was seriously disappointed to find out that Android (even the very newest version) does not support s/mime email encryption. And the third party addons that try to enable it are garbage. They all act as SMTP relays but that does not work well if you want to use exchange via Active Sync protocol. So no encrypted email via exchange servers was disappointment number one.

Disappointment number two is that so far I have never been able to get a successful L2TP/IPSEC VPN connection from the damn thing.

The real kicker though is that currently it is impossible to do client certificate based web authorization. We use this at work all the time for our internal web services since we run a full PKI system. Although Android technically supports this it only does so with the built in Android browser. Chrome can not do this. And the nexus 7 only ships with Chrome not the stock android browser.

Oh and to top it all off certificate based authorization for cisco WI-FI is flakey as all hell.

Epic fail! No secure email, no secure VPN, unreliable enterprise WI-FI, and worst of all no client certificate authentication in the web browser. The darn thing is unusable for getting work done in a secure fashion. If you care at all about trying to do productivity related stuff on a mobile device in a secure way the I sadly have to recommend sticking with iOS based devices as currently android is crap for this use case. Kind of make me sad I had hoped my Nexus 7 would be more useful.

The lack of OneNote mention was jarring to me as well. As a productivity article, you have to recognize that most business users are probably running Office on their computers, which likely includes OneNote. The mobile OneNote client is quite good, although the full version is relatively expensive once you hit the 500 page limit ($15 I think). Still, I've found it totally worth it as I take notes at work and school with my laptop, which are then available on my home PC, my iPad and phone via the cloud.

Evernote is really the only thing comparable, and I'm not sure if it has the same hooks into Office. I love being able to hit a key command and turn a line in a note into a to do item in Outlook which reminds me later on my phone.

For iOS:WEEKCAL: like default calendar on steroids: agenda mode, mini month, year view, share meetings, template events. So much here. Amazing app that few are aware of in the flooded calendar market. (http://www.utilitap.com/weekcalendar)

I wish the native email app on android handled gmail the same way that the gmail app does. Why does Google want me to use two different email clients for work and home addresses?

The reason for that is while Email app is included in AOSP as an open source app, the protocols Google uses in its Gmail app for labels etc are proprietary. This is why there are two separate apps, similar to Browser and Chrome: Browser is an AOSP app and Chrome is Google's.

Such a separation enables you to have a usable OS with a browser and an email client without any of the Google services on your device, when you do an AOSP install (to an Android phone or any other device you port it to, without Google's licensing, like Amazon does). The biggest negative is you also won't have Play Store, but I know people who use their phones this way, for instance with Amazon's app store.

I have been using the TouchDown email app for my work email/calendar since the T-mobile G1. I've checked out a few others over the years, but I always come back to it. I haven't met anyone at my current job who has an Android phone who doesn't use it.

I'm baffled as to how you don't mention OneNote for Windows Phone. It's built right in and is so well integrated I can't for the life of me think why I would ever use a third party. FYI, Evernote does work for Windows Phone 8. I downloaded it on my 920 just right now to try it out.

Although I have never used Aqua, I think that the best email client for android (outside of the native Gmail app) is K-9 mail. It has a TON of different display and email handling options, it's free, and it's opensource (thus fairly ubiquitous app and widget compatibility). Although I'm not a security maven, I believe it also handble s/MIME, but you'd have to check that out for yourself: https://github.com/k9mail/k-9/wiki and https://play.google.com/store/apps/deta ... om.fsck.k9

No mention of the TouchDown app for Exchange on Android? That seems like quite an oversight since it's been around for quite a while and would seem to be the most popular Android app for accessing an Exchange-based account.

Productive work on a smartphone ? Give me a break.My eyes burn and I get severe headache from staring at this tiny display after 15min.Wanna modify your MS Office documents ? A good one. You can just perform some very basic editing tasks.With regard to serious work I'd say a serious OS is needed and a device that enables the user to interact in a productive way.

Another great article. From a productivity angle (and being an Android user), Google Docs, Drive, and the integrated Mail client for work email works well enough. I tend to break out the tablet when I need something a bit more substantial, but sometimes you need to get something done on a severely truncated timetable without the usual resources.

The coverage of iOS throughout this series has been very good. The coverage of Android throughout this series has been alright (though I think some of the better third party apps have been left out). The coverage of Windows Phone throughout this series has been rather poor.

It seems as though only two people at Ars have any grasp of Windows Phone. Peter, because he's the Microsoft guy and Casey, because she does most of the device reviews.

While this article and the series don't prop up iOS when it doesn't deserve it, I can't help but feel that the coverage is slanted toward iOS. We need only check with the CES Gear article to see that almost everyone going had a Macbook and an iPhone as their primary gear. I think that explains a lot.

Pretty good over all. Windows Phone could have had OneNote mentioned, as its very good and is part of office. You can sync it with OneNote on your PC and such through your SkyDrive.

Here at work I use iOS and Notes works fine for what I use it for. And I feel the Exchange support is quite a bit nicer than Androids (Which really need a 3rd party app to get useful exchange support).

Andrew you'll likely want to add that Windows Phone DOES do unified inbox as well. You just said each one is it's own live tile, but you can also combine them.

It's in there ("You can also use the "link inboxes" feature to see messages from more than one account at once.") but if you think it's not explicit enough I can tweak. :-)

Yah, it's a little vague. Plus, it does one thing really well: you can have your work and personal mail in two separate linked inboxes, meaning you can keep your work life unified, but still separate from personal when checking email.

While this article and the series don't prop up iOS when it doesn't deserve it, I can't help but feel that the coverage is slanted toward iOS. We need only check with the CES Gear article to see that almost everyone going had a Macbook and an iPhone as their primary gear. I think that explains a lot.

I can't speak for anyone else, but I did want to throw out that I spend a ton of time on every platform as much as I can - I do, yes, use an MBA and an iPhone as daily drivers, but I've also got an HTC 8X and Nexus 4 that I use regularly and a Nexus 7 that I use pretty much every day (I've also got a Windows partition on all my Macs and a custom-built Windows PC on my desk).

We've all got to pick primary hardware/software to use - stuff that we're comfortable with, and that makes us feel the most productive - but there seems to be a misconception that this somehow blinds us to the virtues of any and all other products. Someone in the comments of Part I of the series called me out for being blatantly biased *against* iOS, if that makes you feel any better. :-)

I *LOVE* the agenda view on Windows Phone. I really wish it was everywhere, including Outlook itself. A nice list of all my events/tasks. I actually barely ever use any other view in the Calendar app. The only reason I ever go to the month view is just to change a date further out.

Also, WP Calendar pro-tip: When in month view, tap the month or year.

Also really wishing there was a OneNote client for OS X. Having access via SkyDrive in the browser helps, but a client would be nice and round out my note access everywhere.

I'm surprised there's no mention of 3rd party calendar apps for the WP section. There are several decent options that enable Live tile support and offer useful features. Live Calendar, WP7 Calendar, and Week View are among some decent alternatives.

While this article and the series don't prop up iOS when it doesn't deserve it, I can't help but feel that the coverage is slanted toward iOS. We need only check with the CES Gear article to see that almost everyone going had a Macbook and an iPhone as their primary gear. I think that explains a lot.

I can't speak for anyone else, but I did want to throw out that I spend a ton of time on every platform as much as I can - I do, yes, use an MBA and an iPhone as daily drivers, but I've also got an HTC 8X and Nexus 4 that I use regularly and a Nexus 7 that I use pretty much every day (I've also got a Windows partition on all my Macs and a custom-built Windows PC on my desk).

We've all got to pick primary hardware/software to use - stuff that we're comfortable with, and that makes us feel the most productive - but there seems to be a misconception that this somehow blinds us to the virtues of any and all other products. Someone in the comments of Part I of the series called me out for being blatantly biased *against* iOS, if that makes you feel any better. :-)

It does make me feel better! I did not mean to be overly critical, just an observation and potential explination of why some things are left out. Someone's daily driver will always impact their opinions and observations. My personal use of Windows Phone clearly makes me biased the otherway.

The prompt update RE: linked inboxes and OneNote demonstrates good faith on your part to be as complete as possible and that the omition was not deliberate or due to incompetence, just an oversight. (Even if it was a big one )

A lot of focus on GMail here. I think Windows' "Linked Inboxes" feature deserved a better mention than the few words used on it.

Edit: I see it's been updated, cool.Any article is obviously going to be colored by what the author uses most. If the author uses a lot of Google services then that becomes important compared to another service's features for eg. labels where everyone else has folders. With regular use instead of just a research period, one would say that WP7 supports multiple Google calendars just as well as anything else, for example.

The point is, I support an earlier commenter's suggestion to have articles this valuable be authored by multiple experts. This does't take away from Andrew's skills for example, but no one person can represent each perspective to the extent that the reader (who lives in mainly one platform) will need. With one guy having to be an expert on multiple ecosystems, stuff like forgetting OneNote happens

Andrew Cunningham / Andrew has a B.A. in Classics from Kenyon College and has over five years of experience in IT. His work has appeared on Charge Shot!!! and AnandTech, and he records a weekly book podcast called Overdue.